We accept that film-makers have more pressing issues than getting kit details right, but at the same time it’s not hard to research what was worn at what time, especially given the easy access to information nowadays.

It’s important, to our minds, to chart the examples where laziness has crept in. If it saves only one reader who might otherwise have been traumatised having picked a film out on Netflix some night, all the better.

First up in 2012 film Playing for Keeps, starring Gerard Butler as a washed-up former pro who seems to be in some kind of a love quadrilateral as well as getting caught up in shady dealings with Dennis Quaid’s character (we didn’t have to watch it all, thankfully, as most of the kit issues are at the start).

As cold opens go, ‘footage’ from the career of Butler’s character George Dryer isn’t a bad idea. The beginning of this featurette is the first scene:

All those things are moot, however, as the cross from which Dryer scores what we are informed is his third goal (“The 83rd minute here at Celtic Park, the phenom George Dryer looking for his second hat-trick of the tournament.”) comes from six years into the future via Colin Healy in the 1999-2000 NTL-sponsored kit:

Also the cross comes in from the new Celtic park and lands in the old one.

We’re being fair, so we’ll give marks for the right shirt – only worn by the Reds for one season – the correct adidas numbering and the mud on him, given the conditions in the real game. We shall be returning to this, though.

Fast-forward to 2005 and George is now playing in the MLS, for DC United.

As the film gets going properly, we realise that things haven’t gone all that well for George since his retirement and, with his landlord demanding rent payment, he visits a sports memorabilia shop, hoping to offload some mementoes.

First up is what he describes as the shirt when he “played against Porto in the UEFA Cup final”:

There’s an out for the makers in that he didn’t specify a year, so maybe in this alternate universe Celtic played Porto in around 1992. The next item he’s trying to sell is clearly stated to be from “Liverpool-AC Milan, 2005” (he must have joined DC United straight after that).

Yes, that’s right, it’s the same Liverpool 1995-96 shirt. Again, if we’re looking for ways to absolve the makers, it might be that George is a bit of a wideboy and isn’t selling his best stuff but trying to pull the wool over the would-be buyer’s eyes. Four medals and “the boots I wore when I scored against England when I played with Scotland” are also part of his proposal, though. One wonders why he didn’t go to an auction house or even eBay (or sold to them all back to Classic Football Shirts), however, as he’s offered $300 for the whole lot.

Clearly trying to give the American audience a reference-point, we then have the store owner asking, “Is that you and Beckham?”

It is, and it can be dated to the 2000-01 season, providing further uncertainty regarding the dates of his transfers. The picture is quite well done, but George replies that it is him and Beckham, from “the quarter-final of the Champions League. That was a great game.”

As it happens, 00-01 was actually the last year before Liverpool would return to the European Cup/Champions League for the first time since the Heysel ban. They have yet to play Manchester United in it, though, and last spring in the Europa League was the clubs’ first meeting in a continental competition.